The short version
One two-bedroom apartment usually wins for a family of four or five. Two hotel rooms win in one situation: you want housekeeping every day and a desk downstairs more than you want a kitchen and a living room.
We rent apartments on East 62nd Street, so we're not neutral here. But we've watched enough families come through to know exactly where the two options split, and it isn't where most people think.
Where two hotel rooms fall down
The problem with two hotel rooms is that they're two hotel rooms. Unless the hotel confirms connecting doors in writing, you can end up across a hall from your kids, or on a different floor entirely. Then there's no shared space. At 8pm the kids go down in one room, and one adult sits in the dark with a phone while the other sits in the dark in the second room. Families do this for a week and go home tired.
The other thing that shows up on night two is food. A hotel room gives you a mini-fridge if you're lucky. With kids on New York time (which is to say, awake at 5:40am), breakfast becomes a restaurant decision every single morning, at restaurant prices, with a wait.
Where a hotel still beats an apartment
We'll say it plainly. If someone making your bed every morning is the thing that makes a trip feel like a holiday, book the hotel. An apartment stay doesn't work like that, and we have a whole page on how housekeeping works here so nobody is surprised. Same if you want a bar downstairs, a bellhop for the bags, or a gym in the building. We don't have a gym or a rooftop, and we've written that down honestly rather than let you find out on arrival.
The real difference is the schedule, not the sticker price
Two rooms means two rates and two sets of taxes and fees. One apartment is one rate and one set of fees. That maths usually favours the apartment, but rates move, so run it for your dates rather than trusting a blog.
What doesn't move is the schedule. In an apartment you cook two or three meals in, which is two or three fewer 45-minute waits with a five-year-old. Naps happen in a bedroom with the door shut while someone else reads in the living room. Wet coats and museum bags have somewhere to go that isn't the end of a bed.
What our two-bedroom actually is
It's a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment on East 62nd Street in Lenox Hill, with a kitchen you're meant to use. One of the two bathrooms has a bathtub, which matters more with small kids than anything else on this page. A pack 'n play is free on request and our team sets it up before you arrive, so you're not assembling anything at 11pm.
Bigger group? There's a three-bedroom that sleeps six, and the whole house plus suites for eight when it's two families travelling together. Dogs are fine, with a policy.
Getting out is easy from the door. Central Park's Fifth Avenue entrance at 60th Street is about an eight-minute walk, so the playground plan is a walk, not a subway ride. The F and Q at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street are two blocks away when you're going further. And there's no lobby to cross with a stroller: we text the door code before you arrive.
How to decide in thirty seconds
Count your bedtimes. If the kids go down before you do, you want a door between the bedrooms and a living room on your side of it. If your trip is two nights and mostly out of the room, two hotel rooms are fine. Anything from three nights up with children, take the apartment.